Stupid Player Syndrome

[Al'Kelhar]

... The 4th player, the wizard, cast invisible servant. Then proceeds to use his actions on the next several rounds to order the servant around and do things like attempt to drop a sack on the giant's head or run a rope through the giants legs so he can attempt to trip it...

...Finally, the mage rushes in to pull the rope and trip the giant.

** Insert spectacular failed dice roll of weak medium sized wizard vs. strong large giant **

OK, as a DM I must admit I tend to look kindly on stupid but brave and unconventional ways to take down bad guys. This looks to me like one of those cases. Which reminds me...

We have this one player who's always coming up with pretty novel things to do in battles where "blunt force trauma liberally applied to the bad guy" is just not a happening thing. Picture a tropical swamp which is basically sparse forest comprising huge trees and 3' of water on the ground. Now picture the party fighting an undead naga which is highly resistant to conventional missiles and happens to be hovering in a lesser globe of invulnerability some 30' above the surface of the water. This player, running the party rogue, decides to climb up a nearby tree on the side facing away from the naga, then circumnavigate the tree trunk and leap onto the naga's back and somehow reduce its skeletal form to powder with his rapiers [?!]. Stupid and not particularly practical, but definitely "heroic" (or perhaps just "cinematic"). So the rogue gets to the right point on the tree trunk, and makes his leap onto the naga's back - rolling a 1 on the attack roll and sailing harmlessly over the back of the naga to fall 30' into the water where he ends up head-first in the mud with only his legs sticking out of the water. At this point, I rule that the naga's dazed for 1 round from being so amused at the stupidity of the plan and the ineptness of its execution...

My players generally like to engage things in melee which really shouldn't be engaged in melee when you've got other options available to you (as mid- to high-level parties do). Dragons, giants, level-draining undead, two-headed giant gnolls wielding Large flails in each hand, all get the "ha, take this longsword to your belly, foul beast" treatment. Frontal assaults against fortified positions are par for the course. Body counts aren't very high, tho', because I'm pretty generous with resting. Maybe I'm just too soft!

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Particle_Man]

Sadly, tonight I was one of the stupid players. Our group was cleaning out some mines that had been taken over by trap-loving kobolds and a fire spell caster. Ok, we had an idea of using goats as trap detectors (having them go ahead of us). (Yeah, we had no high-level rogues. Sigh). We also had the cleric put a glyph of warding on the doors so that we could pass through if we ran back but bad guys couldn't. So the priest set up a password saying that any creature that did not say the password would trigger the glyph. So the DM asks out marching order, and says:

"Player 1 says the password, Player 2 says the password, the goat does not say the password and the glyph goes off".

Argh. A case of two plans that didn't mesh well. At least no one got killed. Well, except the goat.

 

[Samuel Leming]

You'll be able to read about the players from hell in this thread:

Creepiest Person You've Gamed With

The horror! THE HORROR!

Sam

 

[Berandor]

Well, we had a creepy player who also did dumb deeds, but this one involves the whole party.

Backstory: So there's an evil sorceress (the Ice Queen) trying to reassemble a magical mirror. With said mirror, she would gain considerable power. The party is there to stop here. Finally, the party manages to get a hold of one mirror shard - the final one, as it is. Intent on using the shard to somehow defeat the Ice Queen (perhaps by mending the mirror themselves), they travel to her castle.
It's a heavily fortified castle, so the players think of a strategically cunning plan: They charge it, screaming loudly. Curiously, the inhabitants of the castle don't open the gates, so the party comes to stand before the closed double doors.
A voice inquires, "What do you want?"
Thinking on their feet, the players respond, "We've got the shard."
Surprised guards open the doors and call their general. The party enters and is surrounded by one or two dozen heavily armed soldiers, and then the Ice Queen's General comes out to greet them.
General: "You've got the shard?"
PC: "Yes."
General: "Hand it over."
PC: "Alright." (hands shard over)
General: "Thank you. Good Bye."
The soldiers push PCs out the gates, close them. Party stands before the closed double doors again, only without the shard - the final shard - the shard that the Ice Queen subsequently uses to mend the mirror and douse the world into eternal cold. Mission accomplished.

Boy, even the players themselves couldn't believe what they had done.

 

[Christopher Lambert]

I've got players who occasionally won't follow decent tactics, but the only real annoyance I've had are people who still haven't learned the rules. I hate having to say "roll this" to people who don't know what they're doing. It's very hard to flavor text that.

 

[Chimera]

I know I've posted this before in previous threads, but one more time, eh?

My last campaign, begun about 5 years ago under 2e rules. Played with a group of people who were mostly long-time friends, but are not now, and I'm grateful that I am no longer associated with them for many many reasons.

Starting document describes how their home village of 1200 (actually a training camp) is over-run by an army of Trolls, Bugbears and Beholders led by Wizards on Dragons. An overwhelming and total defeat. Is made abundantly clear that there no survivors. The senior and older warriors sacrifice themselves so that some of the children (the PCs being among them) get away - barely.

The PCs run until they're exhausted and collapse in a patch of woods. They are awakened by an NPC the next morning and silenced by him as he points to two dragons circling overhead and a party of careless morons around an open campfire about 100 yards away. Dragons (with Wizards) come down and wipe out careless moron NPCs.

Thus we begin the game, with the atmosphere set. The PCs are 'on the run' from an overwhelming force and had better use all their wiles to escape. They regularly have to hide from flying dragons overhead, who are searching for survivors such as the PCs.

Their first decision.....we want to go back and see if there were any survivors.

"hhhhhhhhhhooooookkkkkkkkaaaayyyyyy. You folks read the setup, right? You know that there probably aren't any survivors and it's a Spectacularly Bad Idea(tm) to go back there, right??? RIGHT???"

An hour or so of arguing later, with me firmly banging my head on the wall in frustration, I finally complete lose my temper and yell at them that if they're going to be that f'ing stupid, we might as well not play at all. I invite them to leave my house and go do unnatural things to themselves.

They don't get it. Dim bulbs all. Don't understand why I'm so upset and blame me for reacting badly. But they reluctantly decide "Ok, we'll go north" (parallel to the 'front lines'.) They keep insisting that they want to go back and look for survivors, or barring that, look for magic items. No matter how many times I tell them that not only will neither of them be found there, but that they'll be committing suicide by trying - and that I simply WILL NOT let them carry out this extremely stupid course of action.

Dwarf Ranger gets separated from party and walks over hill. Sees the back end of a Beholder about 50' away. CHARGES!!!

Me (completely exasperated): OK, you can either roll up a new character, go home, or decide NOT to do that.
Him: Why?
Me (Just stares at him.)
Him: What? I figured you'd never give us an encounter we couldn't handle.

At this point the entire room was looking at him in shock. Where the heck was he (mentally speaking) when all the previous arguing took place???

End of Day 1. Group camps. They decide to light a campfire. NPC reminds them of what happened to the other group. They insist. NPCs threaten to attack anyone trying to light a campfire. They still insist. NPCs walk away shaking their head and calling the party suicidally stupid. Players decide to argue with me about it.

Why I didn't end the session and tell them all to get the hell out of my house and never come back, I'll never know. Well, OK, I do know. They were friends and I was a very forgiving guy. To the point of self-damage.

No more. The next group that does this, gets the firm boot out the door.

 

[afrorooster]

Hahaha, those are all pretty good . I've got a story also.

The story- My hero's are adventuring to the dragon lair to recover the stolen holy symbol used by the church. So the hero's get to the dragon cave and the priest in the party has a skill, converse with animals. They see the dragon and before anyone else can do anything the priest marches foreward and uses his skill and shouts "Are you hostile?". The follow up of that would be a huge jet of fire, and a quick swipe of the paw and a TPK .

 

[Chimera]

Chapter 2: Same group as above.

They visit a friendly new town being established by some NPCs they know and others they're trying to become friendly with. Town has a problem. Every 3 days, someone vanishes without a trace. The person is always alone at the time. They can find no trace of struggle, no tracks (plenty of rangers among town founders), NOTHING.

What does the party decide to do? Spend the next 3 days "patrolling" the edge of town. Just mindlessly marching about en-masse.

So then another person vanishes. Players get angry at me. Why? Because they figure that now that they're on the scene, whatever it is that is taking defenseless isolated people should suddenly change it's tactics and attack the party in broad daylight. HUH????

Not so very calmly, I explain what they're asking for and tell them it ain't going to happen. A bit of arguing ensues and I ask them to come up with a more realistic solution than being stupid and lazy. (Well, I actually said it in a much nicer manner. I was being patient.)

So the party decide to have the Monk walk around alone. Followed by the party? OK, how far behind? "20 feet." *pfft* Use your brains, guys. "Ok, 50 feet". (slamming down papers.) NO! WAKE UP!!! "OK, 100 feet."

So they spend THREE DAYS doing this stupid "five guys follow one guy at a distance of 100 feet and hope something is stupid enough to attack him" bit. I figure they'll get a clue, but they don't.

Another disappearance. Another angry response from the players.

OK, so I pull no punches and tell them bluntly that they're being stupid and that they cannot expect something that is preying on defenseless and isolated NPCs to suddenly attack them or fall into a blatantly obvious trap. They argue that it should, or they'll never be able to solve this. (The ultimate Lazy, Stupid Player Gambit.)

Next tactic. Monk walks up and down river banks outside of town while Ranger follows behind wearing Cloak of Elvenkind and rest of party hides behind some trees some distance away. (Took a bit of discussion before they'd agree to be more than 50' away!)

Monk walking along. Suddenly stops (Hold Person). Then vanishes! (invisibility)

Without making a single move to investigate or do ANYTHING, ranger immediately runs back to party and tells them that the Monk is gone, probably dead, and there's nothing they can do about it.

Holy string of expletives, Batman.

Of course, I didn't allow this to stand, as the Monk was being played by someone else in his owner's absense and I didn't like this kind of monstrous bad play being the death of his character.

(The killer was a Doppleganger Ranger/Wizard, btw)

 

[Chimera]

The Final Chapter, which led to the dissolution of the game and the end of my friendships with these people (along with other, out of game issues).

Prelate of the Cleric's religion disappears. I give her clues. I hand-hold the group to figuring out that the Prelate has business interests and perhaps they should talk to her business manager. (Who is also the Prelate's lover, but they don't know that at the time.)

Business manager lives in the Three Masks Theater (and Inn). Owned and operated by Master Thespian. For no apparent reason, the party's wizard, who has made a point of trying to suck up to and make associations with everyone else of consequence in town, has decided that he hates Master Thespian with a passion and has not once set foot in the TMT.

So what do they do? They get it into their heads that the BM (Business Manager) is responsible for the Prelates disappearance. With no evidence. The Wizard and one of the Rangers (not the one above) decide to meet with the guy in the TMT, where they tell him that they know he's responsible for the Prelate's disappearance and that they intend to kill him. (This is a Good group, btw).

Of course, BM immediately runs to his good friend, Master Thespian, as well as to the town guards, to tell them all that he's received a death threat from this well known wizard.

So....it snows. For the first time in living memory. Over a foot and a half of snow falls overnight. Since the town is basically a refugee camp with more people than adequate housing, where is everyone? In the Inns and Taverns, packed shoulder to shoulder, trying to keep warm. (I'd had this scheduled on the game calendar for more than two months of real time. Just happened to occur when these events were taking place.)

Wizard and Ranger decide to kidnap BM and question him, right out of the Inn. Cleric and other Ranger wisely decide to stay out of it. Wizard and Ranger go to the TMT and watch the guy until he goes up to his room. (Watched by Master Thespian and his entire staff, of course.)

So, how are they going to get the guy?

Wizard decides to cast Invisibility right in the middle of the crowd and then follow the guy. Despite me describing the conditions three times. Argues incessently about how he should be able to do this and how no one should notice him. yeah, right. So I describe how it would work if he were to do this, but say "fortunately, your character is too intelligent to do this".

AFTER this, Ranger decides that his method is basically the same move, only involving pulling up his Cloak of Elvenkind and following the guy. Yeah, right. Same argument. I wouldn't allow it.

They go up to the guy's room. Wizard uses Knock to get in. They physically assault the guy and use spells on him. They open door to carry him out. Master Thespian and bunch of guards standing there, arms folded, waiting for them. They slam the door and go to the window. MT's #1 student levitating outside the window, glitterdust falling around her. "Going somewhere?" she asks?

Players get pissed at me for not allowing them to get away with an extremely stupid plan, for having the NPCs act like real people. The next session, which was our last, was very tense. These two players made it abundantly aware that they were not happy with me.

Then I had a big fight with the Wizard player and haven't spoken to him or the Ranger player since!

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I have dozens of stupid player stories, but this is one of my favorites. What makes it even funnier for me was this guy was normally a very sharp player.

Running a 2e game, and the party, consisting of Humans (Bard, Ranger, and Thief) and a Dwarven Fighter, enter a series of caverns, having learned of a shortcut to their destination that would save them having to travel through wild and troll-filled hill country.

Finding a tomb in the caverns, they decide explore it. After finding a nice pile of loot (with almost no opposition or hinderance), they continue on, and enter one last chamber. On the far side of it, they can actually see daylight. Stepping into the room, several skeletons advance from shadowed alcoves and attack. The Dwarven fighter steps up and swings and connects. BOOM! The skeletons were enchanted to explode (blastbones, I think they were called...from Dragon magazine) for 2d6 damage (same as fireball...blast radius and everything).

The party retreats to plan. The Thief decides that fighting them one at a time was pointless, so he convinces the Fighter that they have to take them out all once, and to do that, he'll grab one end of the 50's rope, the Fighter will take the other, and they'll stretch it across the room and mow 'em down while running down the length of the chamber.

Factor in damage from 11 remaining blastbones at 2d6 apiece, and the result was one dead Dwarven Fighter and one dead Human Thief. The Thief was later resurrected and to this day that player is still made fun of by others for his "brilliant plan".